Devil in a Blue Dress: An Easy Rawlins Mystery

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.

The Long Fall

His name is etched on the door of his Manhattan office: LEONID McGILL , PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. It's a name that takes a little explaining, but he's used to it. Ex-boxer, hard drinker, in a business that trades mostly in cash and favors: McGill's an old-school P.I. working a city that's gotten fancy all around him. Fancy or not, he has always managed to get by - keep a roof over the head of his wife and kids, and still manage a little fun on the side - mostly because he's never been above taking a shady job for a quick buck.

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

Living in an abandoned apartment building in South-Central L.A., Socrates is one step away from the streets. He bags groceries at the supermarket, collects bottles and cans to recycle for pennies, and feels himself slipping toward invisibility - that is, until he meets 11-year-old Darryl, whose already committed murder and is perilously close to slipping into a life filled with only violence and bloodshed. Socrates' determination to fight for and save Darryl lights his own pathway to self-forgiveness.

Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore: A Novel

In this scorching, mournful, often explicit, and never less than moving literary novel by the famed creator of the Easy Rawlins series, Debbie Dare, a black porn queen, has to come to terms with her sordid life in the adult entertainment industry after her tomcatting husband dies in a hot tub. Electrocuted. With another woman in there with him. Debbie decides she just isn't going to "do it anymore". But executing her exit strategy from the porn world is a wrenching and far from simple process.

Talon of God

Imagine that everyone you have ever known or loved was forced against their will into a state of demonic possession and spiritual slavery. Imagine an unholy cabal of the world's richest and most powerful men directing this sinister plan in order to cement their unbridled control of the planet. Imagine two heroes emerging from that darkness to do battle with the forces of evil.

The Syndicate: Carl Weber Presents

They were just kids when Claudette McPhearson took them all in. Eight of them all together. All different races and ethnic makeups, but she loved them as her own. One woman taught them how to love, trust, and respect one another. She was the only glue that kept them together, the only one they wanted to please and never let down. She had been their light at the end of a long troublesome tunnel - it shined so bright. Then, one dreadful day, it all came to a crashing halt.

Fortunate Son

Tommy's nickname is Lucky, but no one would think this crippled boy was blessed. Cursed with health problems and drawn into trouble more often than not, Tommy is the recipient of pity rather than admiration. He is nothing like his stepbrother Eric.

Sin of a Woman

After her very public divorce from Dillon, Raven Black is recovering nicely. Dillon has done everything he can to discredit her, but Raven has learned from her mistakes and him. In fact she's intent on using every bit of Dillon's revenge and betrayal as she prepares to take what is hers - and more. Her ambitions have never been so great, and Raven always knows how to get what she wants. She also won't allow anything or anyone to get in her way.

The Force: A Novel

All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop. He is the "King of Manhattan North", a highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of "Da Force". Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, and the baddest - an elite special unit given carte blanche to fight gangs, drugs, and guns. Every day and every night for the 18 years he's spent on the job, Malone has served on the front lines, witnessing the hurt, the dead, the victims, the perps.

The Late Show

Renée Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none, as each morning she turns her cases over to day shift detectives. A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor. But one night she catches two cases she doesn't want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Ballard is determined not to give up at dawn.

Copycat

Befriending Traci Calloway Cole is the best thing Simone Phillips has ever done. Traci is the kind of woman Simone wants to be - in every way possible. She begins copying her role model. Not because she wants to be Traci. She just wants to be exactly like Traci. Traci doesn't worry, though. She knows Simone doesn't mean any harm and that her mimicry is only sincere admiration. Until she discovers how far Simone's obsession has gone.

The Cartel

The port of Miami brings in millions of dollars worth of cocaine every year, and the Cartel controls 80 percent of it. The Diamond family is a force to be reckoned with, but all hell breaks loose when they lose their leader. The most ruthless gangster Miami has ever seen, Carter Diamond, leaves behind a wife, twin sons, a daughter, and a secret - his illegitimate son, Carter Jones. When young Carter learns of his father’s death, he comes to town and is introduced to the legacy of the Cartel.

The Old Man

To all appearances, Dan Chase is a harmless retiree in Vermont with two big mutts and a grown daughter he keeps in touch with by phone. But most 60-year-old widowers don't have multiple driver's licenses, savings stockpiled in banks across the country, and a bugout kit with two Beretta Nanos stashed in the spare bedroom closet. Most have not spent decades on the run.

Queen Sugar: A Novel

Why exactly Charley Bordelon's late father left her eight hundred sprawling acres of sugarcane land in rural Louisiana is as mysterious as it was generous. Recognizing this as a chance to start over, Charley and her 11-year-old daughter, Micah, say good-bye to Los Angeles. They arrive just in time for growing season but no amount of planning can prepare Charley for a Louisiana that's mired in the past: as her judgmental but big-hearted grandmother tells her, cane farming is always going to be a white man's business.

Man on the Run

It was the night before his wedding, 15 years ago, when the nightmare began for Jay Crawford - locked up for a crime he never committed. Now he's escaped prison and wants nothing more than to clear his name and protect his family. To get justice,he'll need the help of the three best friends who have always had his back - Wil, Kyle, and Allan. But a man on the run requires absolute trust...and Jay may just be setting himself up for the ultimate betrayal.

The Bookseller's Tale: Oxford Medieval Mysteries, Book 1

Oxford, Spring 1353. When young bookseller Nicholas Elyot discovers the body of student William Farringdon floating in the river Cherwell, it looks like a drowning. Soon, however, Nicholas finds evidence of murder. Who could have wanted to kill this promising student? As Nicholas and his scholar friend Jordain try to unravel what lies behind William's death, they learn that he was innocently caught up in a criminal plot.

Spoonbenders: A Novel

Teddy Telemachus is a charming con man with a gift for sleight of hand and some shady underground associates. In need of cash, he tricks his way into a classified government study about telekinesis and its possible role in intelligence gathering. There he meets Maureen McKinnon, and it's not just her piercing blue eyes that leave Teddy forever charmed but her mind - Maureen is a genuine psychic of immense and mysterious power.

Sugar

Sugar arrives in the small town of Bigelow, Arkansas, like an ominous storm. She saunters down the street in a blonde wig and spiked heels, cigarette dangling between red-painted lips. Without even speaking to her, the women in town hate her. But when she moves in next door to Pearl, a woman who tragically lost her daughter 15 years earlier, the two women bond over tragic pasts.

Crime on the Fens: DI Nikki Galena, Book 1

DI Nikki Galena: A police detective with nothing left to lose, she's seen a girl die in her arms, and her daughter will never leave the hospital again. She's gotten tough on the criminals she believes did this to her. Too tough. And now she's been given one final warning: make it work with her new sergeant, DS Joseph Easter, or she's out.

The Gift of Fire & On the Head of a Pin: Two Short Novels from Crosstown to Oblivion

In ancient mythology, the Titan Prometheus was punished by the gods for bringing man the gift of fire - an event that set humankind on its course of knowledge. As punishment, Prometheus was bound to a rock. But in The Gift of Fire, those chains cease to be, and the great champion of man walks from that immortal prison into present-day South Central Los Angeles. Disheveled and lost, he is thrown in jail, where he meets lifelong criminal Nosome Blane....

What the Critics Say

"Mosley's distinctive black investigator, Easy Rawlins, has moved from Watts to West L.A. with his two adopted children, but trouble still follows him. Hired to locate a sultry female acquaintance from his early days in Houston, Easy searches for her gambler brother and questions her Beverly Hills employer, unwittingly provoking racist police harassment. Meanwhile, friend Raymond ("Mouse") has been released from prison and vows revenge on the snitch who put him there. Mosley, as usual, describes a historically correct ethos in deft, literate prose." (Library Journal)

Colorful characters from the inner city. Insight into life in Los Angeles inner city life from the perspective of a patriotic African American veteran of WWII who lives life in the "gray". He knows life is not clear cut "black and white" on moral issues living in a community that is still steeped in the traditions of America's previous 400 years. He has the heart of "Sir Lancelot" but he knows he does not live in "Camelot". He helps people and he hurts people as a pseudo private detective. He works with the "establishment" and he breaks the rules and would be treated an outlaw if caught breaking the rules of law when he sees a higher moral justification. I love other genre's such as counterespionage, detective, adventure and historical fiction but I find the "Easy Rawlins" series so comfortably enjoyable. It reminds me of past characters in my early life in the 50's and 60's before leaving the south side of Chicago, going off to college in small town Iowa and subsequently becoming a officer in the USMC during the final two years of the Vietnam War era. I really find this series so enjoyable and I regret the books in this series are less than 10 hours long. I wish they were 16 to 24 hours long so I could enjoy a longer story.

This review is written purely from my own likes and biases which may, or may not, agree with your own.

The narrator missed the mark here. I felt like he wasn't interested in the book as he was reading it. There is a difference between reading dialogue from a dark, sullen character and reading with seeming disinterest. This is a shame since the narrator is a talented actor with the ability to "act" this book better.

The book itself starts off VERY slowly. Having previous knowledge of the character Easy Rawlins may have helped. The beginning of the book seems to be dragging out a character development that could have happened faster. Easy Rawlins is not a likable character and most of his interactions are with equally distasteful characters. Easy reluctantly lumbers through life as if the very act of living is both tedious and painful. This book doesn't just teeter on the edge of despair, but gleefully wallows in the deepest depths. I am able to enjoy dark novels, but this one seems to be trying too hard to reach a new low in hopelessness.

I was disappointed by the amount of foul language in this book. It seemed to be purposely peppered within the text as if the author was trying to fill a quota. I did not read the entire book. In fact, I removed the book from my device before I reached the halfway point.

This is definitely not a book for everyone. However, if you like books filled with crushing melancholy then you should check this one out.

Absolutely. Its careful crafting of plot, character and language take you deep into its moment in history, while maintaining a broad human perspective. It is a detective book fashioned out of literary fabric.<br/>

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Some boyhood memories can move men.

Any additional comments?

Mosley is among the most sophisticated writers in America's ongoing quest to formulate its complex narrative of race. Easy Rawlins speaks on many levels, in many voices, tweaking the assumptions of many audiences. Mosley will be on the classics bookshelf forever.